Embrace of the Damned (39 page)

Broder took a step toward her, not allowing her to retreat. “I cleaved their heads from their necks, their arms from their shoulders. I cut them all down. I bathed in their blood and I reveled in it. With sword and ax, I killed them all. Nearly wiped them out of existence in one blood-drenched afternoon.”

“Who?” Jessa’s voice came out on a weak puff of breath. It was as if all the warm emotion she’d ever had for Broder was ebbing away. It left her cold; it left an empty place where her heart had been. She knew who he was speaking of, of course she did, but she needed to hear the words from his lips. “Who did you kill?”

“You know.” His voice was rough and empty sounding at the same time. “The seidhr. Witches and shamans alike.”

Silence filled the room like a living thing, sucking out all the air. Jessa stood, staring at Broder, at a loss for words.

Thorgest didn’t have any trouble finding something to say. “He killed yer great-great-grandfather, Jessa—my father. He killed my mother. He nearly wiped out our entire genetic line.” His gaze swung to Broder. “It must be strange to understand how close ye came to ensuring that Jessa was ne’er born. How many other witches and shamans ne’er saw the light of day because of ye?”

Jessa was still stunned speechless. What had been revealed was like a punch to the gut. She would
rather
have had a fist to the stomach in place of this. It was as if she didn’t know Broder at all.

He was a stranger to her.

She’d known his original crime was bad, but she hadn’t known it had been anything close to this. The remorseless slaughter of an entire enclave of her people—her blood kin? “Why did you come here?” she finally managed to ask through a constricted throat. Her voice came out sounding as cold as the center of her chest.

Broder jerked as if she’d slapped him. “I came … for you.”

“Seems a bad idea now, doesn’t it?” spat Thorgest.

Broder hardly heard Thorgest’s words. He knew the old shaman was doing his best to twist the knife in the wound, but it was impossible to make things worse. He saw the truth in Jessa’s eyes—she was lost to him in every way.

Now she saw the monster he was. Now she knew his darkest secret.

Of all the women he could have fallen in love with it had to be a witch….

There was more to the story, but it didn’t make a difference if she knew it or not. Right now he might as well have been standing in front of her with a bloody sword in one hand and an ax in the other, the carnage he’d wrought in that ancient seidhr enclave all around him. It was as if he truly was back on that day, his side a bleeding, meaty mess and his life leaking out onto the floor.

It hadn’t mattered then and it didn’t matter now. Without Jessa’s love nothing mattered.

“I have no idea who you are,” Jessa whispered, ignoring her great-grandfather completely. Broder saw frosty hurt in her eyes, laced with the emotion he never wanted to see on her face when she looked at him—
fear, revulsion
.

The icy black hole in the center of his chest that had been threatening to engulf him since she’d left suddenly swallowed him whole.

“I’ll leave,” he said, his voice low and rough sounding—broken.
He didn’t move, though. Instead he lingered, hoping for one last impossible reprieve, for Jessa to realize he wasn’t that man anymore, for her to realize she loved him no matter what. A thousand years had passed. He’d paid for his crimes. If he could take it all back, he would. Couldn’t she see how much he’d risked by coming here?

Couldn’t she feel how much he loved her?

Optimistic to the bitter end. He never would have guessed he possessed that trait. It had taken Jessa to bring it out of him.

Framed in the doorway, he turned to her and ignored Thorgest’s body language that said he wanted to whup his ass.
He could try
. Broder wouldn’t mind doing a little whupping of his own and was pretty sure he could take even the master shaman in a fight. He wouldn’t give in to the temptation, for Jessa’s sake. A final gift to her.

Pushing past Roan, he made his way to the front door.

He wanted to look over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the only woman he’d loved in a thousand years, but he couldn’t do it … not when she was looking at him that way.

“This can’t be happening.” Jessa put a hand to her forehead and took a step back. Thorgest and Roan were there in a heartbeat, helping her to ease into a chair.

Sam padded out of the room on huge wolf feet, following Broder, assuring he left the premises, she was certain.

She shivered, unsure about how she felt about Broder leaving.

Everything was a jumble in her mind; her emotions were like tangled balls of yarn and she couldn’t separate the skeins. Something about this was off. Something was wrong. She wanted to go after Broder, and yet, what he’d done had been so terrible … and oddly
personal
even though it had happened so long before her birth. What he’d done had been unforgivable, even if it had been a thousand years ago and he’d endured a living hell since then to pay for it.

“There, there, lass, let it go,” Thorgest said, kneeling
beside her. “He’s not worth another thought. Loki is making sure he suffers for what he did.”

“I’m caught in a nightmare,” she murmured.

“Ye’ve yer studies here,” Thorgest continued. “Ye have us, yer family. Maybe one day ye’ll find another man, a better man. Dinna worry yer pretty head over Broder Calderson.”

Another man. She grimaced. She didn’t want another man.

“A man like Sam, perhaps.”

Her grimace deepened.

“Then one day, when ye’re ready, ye’ll take the reins of this place.”

She blinked and looked at her great-grandfather. “What?”

“Thorgest hasn’t told you yet.” Roan wiped at his lip where Broder had punched him. There was a note of emotion in his voice, something she couldn’t identify. “We weren’t going to do that until later.”

Thorgest seemed to realize he’d said something he shouldn’t have, which raised every one of Jessa’s red flags. Apparently Roan’s comment had warned him he’d trod into dangerous territory. “Tell me what?” Her tone brooked no denial of a straight answer.

“In the seidhr, leadership passes through the bloodline, lass,” said Thorgest. “Through our family. Ye’re like a princess about to become a queen.”

She frowned. “And if I don’t want to be queen?”

“It’s what you were born to be.” Thorgest’s voice held a hint of steel that made her bristle. Who was he to dictate the shape of her future? He’d already made it clear he wanted her with Sam. Now this?

She shivered.
Wait a minute.
Of course she wanted to be queen! Who wouldn’t want to be a queen? Sam was a different matter, but she could cope with that later. She settled back against the chair. “We’ll need to talk a lot more about this.”

Yes,
queen
.

Thorgest smiled. “’Course we will, lass.”

Roan glared at Thorgest. “You need to make sure Broder has left the enclave.” He paused. “As the current leader it’s
your
responsibility,” he added.

Thorgest hesitated a moment, the lines around his mouth deepening. Clearly he didn’t like the note of demand in Roan’s voice. But he stood all the same. “Duty calls. I’ll be back soon, me lass.”

Once Thorgest was gone, Roan knelt before her, his hands on her upper arms, his eyes serious. “You asked the wrong question.”

“What?” She looked into his intense face, feeling a little drugged. It had to be the stress. She blinked, trying to clear the cloud hanging around her head.

“You asked Broder the wrong question. You asked him why he came here when you should have asked him
why he did it
.”

“You’re confusing me.” She shivered and twitched at the same time. What was wrong with her?

“You know why he came here, Jessa, even though Loki will flay the skin from his bones for stepping foot inside the enclave. He did it for you. He did it because he loves you and he can’t let you go, no matter the cost.”

She bit her lower lip. “I know that, but what he did—”

“Was inconceivable to any normal human brain. He was a berserker of old, Jessa, slaughtering all he saw.”

“Exactly. I feel like I don’t even know who he is.”

“You need to ask yourself why he did it. I’m not saying it excuses it; I’m saying there are things you don’t know.”

“Like what?”

“Go after him. Ask him.”

She thought about that for a moment. Then she shivered. “No. I should stay here.”

Roan made a frustrated sound and shook her. “You are a new witch, Jessa, but you’re not weak. Find the thread and cut it.
Find your strength.
”

She frowned at him, trying to figure out what he meant.

Thorgest reentered the room, a wide smile on his face. “He’s gone, past the wards. Good riddance to ’im, too.”

Despair welled up in Jessa’s chest.
He was gone
. Likely she would never see him again. But, maybe, if she got up right now and ran …

But no.

She looked up at Roan, to find him staring down at her with disappointment on his face. Find the thread and cut it, he’d said. Find the thread of
what
? She parsed the thoughts and emotions crowding her and found a faint one, dying in the back, that she had a feeling should be more prominent. She focused on it.

“I need to see him.” Jessa stood.

Thorgest looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “He’s gone, lass. Best ye let him go. He’s a bad man. Got no place here.”

Jessa started to agree with him, then stopped herself.
Find it and cut it.
“I need closure. I need to know why he did it, Thorgest.” She walked toward the door, mostly just to see if she could. It was a little like walking through molasses … a little like walking through the wards around the enclave.

Did that mean there were wards of some kind between her and Broder? Was there magick affecting her now, keeping her from exercising her free will?

“Ye leave this building, take one step toward that man, ye can never come back, lass.” Thorgest’s voice boomed behind her, accented with magick to make it seem bigger, deeper, more commanding.

Jessa stopped in her tracks and turned slowly. “Are you threatening me?” She shivered and her anger eased. Realization bloomed.

Oh, hell
. There
was
magick affecting her. The thread of it wrapped her will like a piano wire, choking off certain thoughts and emotions … the ones Thorgest deemed dangerous.

“It’s for yer own good, lass. The man’s no good for ye.”

She took a step toward her great-grandfather, trying to summon the flash of rage she’d had a moment earlier. She needed that anger now, needed that intense emotion to burn away the enchantment that had been set on her, to cut the thread that was slowly killing her will.

“Just like the spell you’ve put me under to keep me compliant and easygoing is for my own good, right, Thorgest?”

Thorgest took a step back, the blood draining from his face.

“I just figured it out.”

Her great-grandfather shot a look filled with daggers at Roan.

“He didn’t tell me.” Well, not directly. “I figured it out on my own. How long has it been on me? Who placed it?” She took another step toward him, her rage trickling through her veins a little harder, a little faster. A shiver started and she stopped it dead in its track with a vicious force of her will.

They would never break her.

“Ye leave here to go after that man and ye leave this all behind. Ye’ll never be a real witch, Jessa. All you’ll be able to manage are tricks fit for a toddler’s amusement.”

“Don’t tell me what I’ll be capable of.” Another step toward him.

Now her rage was a running river, pushing away every last vestige of the spellwork that had been woven over her. She summoned her strength of will—which had always been a formidable force—and severed that choking thread. She sensed the tatters of the ruined spellwork fluttering harmlessly to the floor all around her.

Thorgest threw an arm wide in an encompassing gesture. “All this can be yers. We need ye to lead the enclave, lass. This can be yer home. This is yer family.”

“I had a family. Her name was Margaret, the woman my mother
chose
to raise me in the event of her death.” She paused, realization dawning. “It was Carolyn, wasn’t it? She placed the magick the night she called me. I understand now. That’s why I left the keep, why I left Broder.”

Thorgest said nothing and she knew her guess was right. A light of fear had entered his eyes and she wondered why they were so desperate to keep her here. “We’re yer blood, lass. We only did what was best for ye.”

Jessa looked Thorgest up and down. “
I
decide what’s best for me, Thorgest. Right now I’ve decided that
leaving
is best. I’m out of here.” Nodding once at Roan, she turned on her heel and walked out the door.